Word vomit occasionally sprinkled with nuggets of wisdom.

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I feel like I haven’t even touched my camera in forever. I’ve been in a bit of a rut. I’m frustrated with both of my jobs for various reasons and yet, as you might imagine, there aren’t a lot of other options floating around for employment.

I’ve been working both of these jobs now for a year and though my schedule has adjusted a little bit–I do now have two full, consecutive days off, the outline essentially remains the same. I work about 45 hours a week. Two of those days are doubles where I start work at 7.30 am and finish between 9 and 10.30 pm depending on the day with two hours off in between shifts, about 45 minutes of which is eaten up with travel time between job one and job two. I am lucky to live above one of my jobs, which means that I do get some home time in between shifts on those double days. Still, it’s certainly no picnic. And after a year, it has definitely gotten old.

But, here I am. The economy in the shitter and I want a different job. I do feel fortunate to HAVE two jobs currently and so have the luxury of not feeling rushed or pressed into taking any job I can get but I’m starting to feel as if I’d rather not have a job because of the level of stress and frustration that I experience from the two jobs I have.

I’ve been here before–trapped into something that I have little option out of except in the distant future. Before, it was living in Maine. The only difference there is that I was less stressed about work and more financialy secure than I am now.

Anyway. That’s part of the reason that I haven’t been posting photos: I haven’t been taking any to post.

Ruts are no fun to be in and having an argument on Valentine’s Day with your Man doesn’t help either. Not that I had big heart-and-cupid dreams about Valentine’s Day but arguments are no fun no matter what day they’re on. Not that it was really that much of an argument. It was more of a snap from me asking rather forcefully and loudly if we could please change the subject as four of us walked across the Hawthorne Bridge last night. Admitedly, it was not the most constructive way for me to express my discomfort with the topic at hand but the Man basically didn’t talk to me for the rest of the night and when I opted to leave the theatre at intermission, because I was suddenly exhausted and have a long day at work today, he felt it was better for me to go back to my place rather than to his and wait for him to come home. Which is fair since we hadn’t really had the chance to discuss what had happened and why I was frustrated and why he was frustrated. And more than likely, we wouldn’t have discussed it if I’d been asleep in his bed either. Still, it’s one of those things that has left a sour feeling in my stomach.

This relationship thing isn’t easy–I don’t think anyone ever promised that it would be–and this is certainly the longest relationship I’ve been involved in for quite a while. It’s challenging me an awful lot to grow and to let down barriers and to learn to trust someone more than I probably ever have. All of these are good things. Still, my past experience has seen people walk away from things far less serious than this for far more stupid things. If he were the kind of person to do that, the Man would have walked away from this long ago for something more stupid than this and I don’t really feel like this is going to be something to break our relationship.

Hm. I should probably think about getting to work now even though my thoughts aren’t really finished on this.

I’ll get back to pictures soon. I don’t know if I’ll try to catch up or just pick up where I should be. I’m almost a week behind now and Tuesday will be the earliest that I have the chance to try to catch up. Maybe I’ll set myself a photo safari for Tuesday. Actually, there’s some interesting construction going on over by the Lloyd Center that I’ve been wanting to get shots of before it gets too far along. Maybe I’ll head over there Tuesday and see what my camera sees…

I’ve been quiet, I know. Part of it has been work. Just busy and feeling a little drained. Part of it has been being on antibiotics for the past two weeks (I’m fine, but there’s a story and I’ll get to that). And part of it has just been me doing a lot of thinking and not feeling the need to write about those thoughts here. I think I’ve done enough thinking for the moment, though and am ready to belch forth some words for your consideration.

As you’ll remember, I had been seeing someone who stood me up—twice!—after about six weeks. Well, needless to say, I’m not seeing him any longer. Funny thing about my life, though, is that it likes to throw coincidences at me from time to time. The same day that he stood me up for the second time, it started to burn when I peed. Usually, that’s not a good sign so I went to get it checked out and was told by the totally awesome tranny nurse at the STD clinic that there was a good chance that it was chlamydia. As it turns out, it’s the most common STD in the world and can be cleared up with one dose of antibiotics. Swallow some pills, they send you on your way. While I was there, I had them give me a full STD screening because it had been a while anyway. Results in a week.

A week later, I phone to get my results and everything is all well and good except that they’re able to confirm that I did, indeed, have chlamydia. My symptoms had all gone away so there was nothing to worry about. I did, however, have to contact anyone that I’d had sex with in the last two months. The clinic offered their anonymous service where they call for you but I wanted the satisfaction of calling myself.

My voicemail went something like this: ‘Hi, it’s me. I’m just calling to let you know that I was just tested and treated for chlamydia, which means that there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve got it too. If you call this person at this number at the county clinic, they can get you in and tested and treated for free. There’s no need to call me back I just wanted to do the responsible thing and let you know.’

Of course, he feels the need to call me back. I screen his call. His voicemail isn’t worth much more than the electrons that it was recorded on. Though he asks me to return his call, I have no intention of doing so.

I run into him on the bus the next day and do my best to pretend I’m reading until he finally taps me on my shoulder and I have little choice but to acknowledge him. I tell him that I’m feeling fine and he thanks me profusely for letting him know and says he’s going to go get himself checked out. I go back to my book as soon as he stops talking.

As always seems to be the case, I know how to pick ’em.

Now, the infection itself I really don’t see as too big a deal. As I said above, it’s the most common STD in the world. I could have lived without it, but as long as it’s treated in a timely manner, it’s no big deal. To be honest, I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t had anything like this before. Basically, it’s a urinary tract infection though if it’s in your body long enough, it can get further up into the nether regions.

The whole experience, however, soured me on men more than a little bit—not that this is anything new. Still, I’ve been telling myself, much more as of late, that I really need to focus on me and not anyone else. I didn’t make any New Year’s Resolutions this year but I did make some New City Resolutions. I’ll get to those below but for now I’ll say that the further proof of my six-week curse as well as the lovely parting gift only furthered my feeling that I need to focus on me for the time being.

Which brings us to two weeks ago. I’ll spare you all the specifics but my symptoms came back and were worse and it was pretty clear that the infection had hung around long enough to get further up into my nether regions. So back to the clinic I went.

This time, I was not so lucky as to get the kick-ass tranny nurse that I saw the first time. Instead, I got one whose initial reaction to my symptoms was testicular cancer.

Perhaps if she’d looked at my case history and listened to what I was telling her, she wouldn’t have jumped immediately to that conclusion. Basically, I argued her out of that diagnosis and got her to give me more antibiotics, which I’m still on. Initially it was 10 days but when I went back for my follow-up, I got extended another 11 for a total of 21. Three whole weeks. Yippee.

(As an aside, somewhat in the nurse’s defence, I am a prime target for testicular cancer right now but I’m pretty in tune with what’s going on down there and surely would have noticed an abnormal lump growing over a period of a few weeks/months and not one that appeared over the course of about 24 hours. So much for sparing you all the details of my symptoms: it was epididymitis. Click the link if you really want to know more.)

So, what is normally something that gets taken care of by one dose of antibiotics has landed me on three weeks of antibiotics. Know what you can’t do when you’re on antibiotics? Drink. Guess what was this weekend? The Oregon Brewers’ Festival. Sigh.

Anyway, as I said above when I mentioned the antibiotics, all is well and good. I still have another week or so of pills but at least it’s not cancer or something else that can’t be cleared up by taking some pills. In the meantime, I’m just gorging myself on yoghurt and thinking about how good that first drink is going to be come August.

Well, this has turned into quite a long post already, hasn’t it? I think it’s probably best to leave it here for now and I’ll write about everything else soon. Actually, that makes a lot of sense since part of what I’ll be writing about is my new schedule for myself, which ties in with the aforementioned New City Resolutions and my attempts to stick to them.

It’s berry season here in Oregon. And, yes, I’m aware that cherries are not berries even if they rhyme, but it also happens to be late cherry season. And I just ate a bowl full of Oregon cherries while watching the Ice Storm. Well, I also ate a bowl full of some delicious briyani that I made tonight for dinner.

My roommates have been away for most of the week so it’s just been me and the dogs doing a lot of hanging out. They’ve been a bit rambunctious and I can’t really blame them because I probably would be too if I were cooped up in a kitchen all day and didn’t have opposable thumbs that I could use to cook things. Other than that, though, they’ve been pretty good. I rather enjoy my roommates dogs.

This post isn’t about them, though. It’s about me. Well, not entirely.

As you will recall, I was stood up last Saturday night by the boy I’ve been seeing for the past six weeks or so. When I finally called him on Tuesday and pointed this out to him, he seemed genuinely surprised and begged that he had honestly forgotten that we were supposed to go out Saturday. As to why he didn’t respond to my texts, he had nothing to say.

He asked if there was any way that he could make it up to me and I, being a nice guy—or being a sucker, I haven’t decided which, said yes. Friday seemed to be the night that would work best for both of us so we made plans to meet up after he finished up with a work thing that he had to go to at 5. I figured 7 or 8, though we didn’t set a definite time. 830 rolled around and still no sign of him so I went out for some food and drink with my book and thought maybe I’d hear from him while out. I came home and not long after started getting ready for bed when a little after 10 my phone rang and it was him.

I screened and in his voice mail he said that he was just leaving the work thing and that he and some friends were going to get something to eat and he wanted to know if I’d like to join them. After debating for about 10 minutes whether to even listen to the message I did and then went upstairs to brush my teeth.

My phone rang again. An update in plans about where they were headed for food and a reminder of what his phone number was.

Now, I’m actually not all that angry. I am but not a lot. More than anything I’m just frustrated that I can’t seem to find a mature guy who has his shit together and can handle something that lasts longer than a few weeks. This technically made it to six but even still that’s not very long.

I guess I could go spit cherry pits at him but that probably isn’t going to be a good indicator of my own maturity level.

But, as I mentioned above, I just ate a bowl full of cherries and now I’m left with a bowl full of pits and I’ve got to do something with them.

So…one of my roommates clients has a house that she has been using as a rental that she wants to sell and has offered it to my roommate and her husband as a rent-to-buy situation. It’s an adorable little house and a fantastic opportunity for them. And they still want me to live with them.

Except that the house is in nowhere that is in any way convenient for me to live unless I were to buy a car and that’s really not something that I want to do considering how expensive gas is, never mind the fact that I right now am paying $65 a month for my bus pass and don’t particularly want to quadruple that amount just to pay for gas, never mind insurance.

Um, so, yeah.

I’m also angry with the boy that I’ve been seeing because we were maybe going to go out Friday night and were pretty definitely going to go out last night except that he never called or responded to my texts until this morning when he phoned to say that he was really hung over and was wondering how I was doing since it’d been a couple of days since we’d last spoken.